IBM is breaking away from the pattern of cloud infrastructure established by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. IBM’s future cloud offering can be based on whatever form of virtualization and server hardware that IBM chooses, as opposed to following the model of all x86 Intel architecture that Amazon Web Services and most other providers do.

“Electricity that comes out of the socket gets produced by a mix of coal, solar, hydro and nuclear, but it’s still 120-volt electricity,” Koehler said. By implication, he was saying in the future, cloud compute power may likewise stem from a mix of x86, IBM Power, Z series and graphics processors.

Stay turned, and keep watching. Someone is telling us they are waking up and responding to real market demands instead of trying to shape market to fit the product they already have. And IBM is good at technology for longer than most companies have existed. But expect their offering to be aimed squarely at businesses, like a Selectric typewriter, not individuals, like off brands.

“Agencies reported using several systems that have components that are, in some cases, at least 50 years old. For example, the Department of Defense uses 8-inch floppy disks in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation’s nuclear forces. …”

Department of Veterans Affairs
System: Personnel and Accounting Integrated Data
Age: 53
Function: Automates time and attendance for employees, timekeepers, payroll, and supervisors.
It is written in Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL)—a programming language developed in the 1950s and 1960s—and runs on IBM mainframes.
Replacement coming?: Yes -The agency plans to replace it with a project called Human Resources Information System Shared Service Center in 2017.

Department of Veterans Affairs
System: Benefits Delivery Network
Age: 51
Function: Tracks claims filed by veterans for benefits, eligibility, and dates of death. This system is a suite of COBOL mainframe applications.
Replacement coming?: No -The agency has general plans to roll capabilities into another system, but there is no firm time frame associated with this transition.